PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Chico the Chihuahua mix is back in his owners’ arms after a frightening trip through the Fort Pitt Tunnel on Monday.

But as it turns out, his adventure actually began three weeks ago.

“I took Chico on a playdate, and he decided he wanted a girl… and ran off,” said Treble Dixon, the dog’s owner. “I went chasing. I ran after him and chased him, and I couldn’t find him. I screamed, I hollered,”

That was in Elliott, and Dixon has been looking for her dog ever since. She called police, and then her brother saw the video on the news. Chico – running along the side of the tunnel.

Good Samaritans stopped to coax him to safety after the frightened dog ran under a car.

“The owner lived in McKees Rocks, so it could have been that Chico was on his way back to McKees Rocks via the quickest way that he knew, which was probably the Fort Pitt Tunnels,” said David Janusak, of the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.

“I watched the news, and I said, ‘There goes my Chico. There goes my baby, and then I called,” said Dixon.

She was reunited with Chico at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.

“When she came in, it was proof positive, Chico ran right into her arms,” said Janusak.

“I felt like my life came back,” Dixon says. “Since Chico been gone, I’ve been very depressed and I didn’t want to do anything.”

After a close call in a busy tunnel, Chico is back safe at home.

“I was like losing my mind,” Dixon added. “I had a lot of loss in my life for the last few years, and then my dog was taken away, too. He’s everything to me. Everything.”

David got his start at KDKA as a writer in 1991 before being promoted to a newscast producer.
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